Syrin, now Banshee was my favorite member of X-Force, closely followed by Warpath (despite the fact he was a complete stereotype). Of course her pop was my favorite X-Man, so it could just be a case of transference of cool. I'm glad she's going by her father's codename now, since Baen Sidhe are female ghosts! I always thought it was strange that Sean picked a feminine codename...now if we could only do something about Gorgon.

-I've ranted about Rob Liefeld's tendencies as both an artist and as a writer/concept creator a billion times, but it never quite gets old. Domino is a hallmark of his: Patches or things over the eyes (Domino has one circle-thingie, Deadpool and Wildside both have two; Cable & Shatterstar both have eye-stars). Despite being a mutant, she was mainly a "Gun Chick" for years, actually having a metahuman power added either after the fact, or as an afterthought in general (Cable's Telekinesis, Shatterstar's Sword-Blast). Generic mysterious origin with little snippets given here or there, meant to copy Wolverine's famously-hidden beginnings. It's all there.

-Her history with X-Force is rather funny, as the Domino we saw pop in all of a sudden during the final days of "The New Mutants" turned out to be an imposter, a Mystique rip-off named Copycat, who was a mole on the team to Cable's nemesis (other than Stryfe) Tolliver. This was weird storytelling, but it almost seems like a "take THAT" to Liefeld, who was departing for Image Comics at the time, by taking his character and insert some other nonsense to it. Needless to say, Domino EVENTUALLY joined the team for reals, and flirted with Cable while generally being the Deadpan Snarker who snidely mocked everyone else (without being too annoying about it). She eventually became Team Leader during the weaker era of the book, but surprisingly, unlike most 90s creations and minor-league X-people, she's had a bit of longevity: She featured heavily during the "Red Hulk" storyline for whatever reason, and has had a Limited Series or two over the years. Quite impressive for what at-heart is a Black Widow knock-off with Longshot-ish powers.

-Domino has the Mutant Power that allows "Everything to Fall Into Place" for her. This generally means that people miss when aiming for her, she hits just the right button to stop a bomb, and she always finds the easiest exit, etc. Curiously, Probability Control isn't listed in 3e at this time (kind of a rare power, so I get that), but that's OK, because that or Luck Control both handle things like that equally well. Otherwise, I could just use P.C., just transferred directly from 2e to 3e. The way she is now, she just has a stack of Hero Points, plus a ton of Defensive Advantages as part of her Powers, with the Luck Control abilities to screw with her enemies' rolls.

-This Luck is added to a Spy Build, resulting in a pretty expensive character, but not overly-so. Since Skills are so brutally expensive now, she spends a big chunk of points on 'em, as well as packing a lot of Defense in general onto the build. Her guns are a bit more powerful than the common Equipment guidelines, mainly because I believe M&M's own "Gun" set-ups are ludicrously pathetic in terms of damage (I agree with Pamela Isley on that regard, at least), and it's an actual super-hero using them, not a Mook. She can modify nearly all of her Caps in combat, and leans heavily towards accuracy & avoidance rather than damage & Toughness.

-With Probability Control (probably the same cost as in 2e), she can now roll a minimum of 6 on any given roll, but it's Uncontrolled (since it's always been a minor aspect of her character and her powers in the comics). You could really give it almost ANY kind of Rank and have it be half-way accurate to the comic, but this is about as much as you need, I think. It boosts the cost of the character by a FAIR ways, so I would probably not go by this method.

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Jun 22, 2013 1:00 am, edited 3 times in total.

Complications:Prejudice (Mutant)Secret- Vanessa is usually deep in disguise, and must keep her true origins secret.Relationship (Deadpool)- Vanessa has dated the Merc With A Mouth in the past, and the two are in a love/hate kind of thing.

-May as well do a Copycat build. She's basically a Mole inserted by Tolliver to disrupt & kill X-Force, but she ended up trying to make amends, though it nearly got her killed. There was some background stuff involving Domino (who was QUITE annoyed to have been held captive for over a year while Vanessa took her place, to put it mildly) and Deadpool (whom she dated for a time), but it was really minor to the book, though it did produce a Marvel Comics appearance of the gang from "Cheers" (no, really). She got more play in Deadpool's own series, where she was eventually killed by Sabretooth. Honestly, I think it was a weird plot twist, not entirely great, and the character was basically "Mystique, But Nicer", so I'm not a big fan.

-Copycat's a tricky one, as her Mimic power is apparently powerful enough to copy superhuman powers, in addition to morphing her mind and body to fool even the closest allies (Cable was very familiar with Domino, and was fooled for months; even telepaths can usually not tell Copycat from the original). This leaves her a PL 8 baseline character, but she can boost her traits up to allow a PL 10 fighter (she was PL 9 as the fake Domino). As a Flaw, she needs to actually be touching anyone she full-on mimics, though she can still adopt the appearances just by looking at pictures.

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

Looking good as usual, Jab! You're an inspiration to us other Roll Callers.

Regarding Domino, I remember the character, but I'll be damned if the pose in that picture isn't the most generic female hero/villain pose ever. There are about a million such drawings and they just have no meat, literally and figuratively. I don't like skeletal-thin women and the pose has no life and no action to it. That exact same pose fills so many old issues of Wizard magazine (years old) and comics I have from the 90s on up that it could be any given female character. Stylized is one thing, exaggerated another, and both are to be expected in comics.

But that particular style has always annoyed the hell out of me.

The actual builds look good, though. You have a cool set of characters here, a lot that I don't see elsewhere, and that's good. There are a ton of popular mainstream heroes and villains 'round these parts, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I like seeing less common characters.

Yeah, Tony Daniel was REALLY bad for that, especially with the overly-flexible skinny girl look. Some of his pictures of Siryn had her doing the equivalent of a contortionist's pose while she was supposed to be casually sitting in a chair! Domino often struck poses like that, WHILE UPSIDE-DOWN, in the middle of a firefight! The 90s was awful for stuff like that, and probably helped to keep as many women as possible from reading comics.

Yeah, looking at that picture, it just looks painful. It looks like she was put on the rack or something, I mean it looks jarring. I get the idea of "going for sexy," but when I look at that, it doesn't look "exaggerated sex appeal," it looks jarring, wrong. Draws my eye in the wrong fashion, makes her look inhuman and such.

I can't think offhand of an example done right, but She-Hulk I know I've seen some good renditions of, where she is sexy but muscular and not in some ridiculously impossible pose. Especially for something while sitting in a chair. Damn '90s.

Also, the pushing women away from comics is another reason to stop doing stuff like that.

But anyway, your skills as a character builder are quite excellent, sir. Don't let me go into too much of a rant on the ridiculous contortion BS for some art and detract from your ability, but you're right: the nineties were just awful for that kind of stuff.

One month and half, 200 posts already, I'm really impressed Jab. By the way I really like you New Mutants run, I was working on my own version (and having a major headache figuring Dani's powers) before the current run of Fantasy builds suck all of my time.

Jabroniville wrote:Yeah, Dani was a pain to put together. If he powers weren't explicitly Emotion-based I likely would've just gone for Illusion and been done with it, but they honestly seem linked to me.

Well, more than that my big problem was that she had at least 3 different power sets over the years: emotion-based illusions, emotion based constructs and psionic arrows. While I usually write the middle one out as a simple attempt to gave her the Sue Storm powerlifting and the last one as one of Rob Liefeld bigger and badder, they made me think about giving her some level of arraying.

Complications:Prejudice (Mutant)Relationship (Rictor)- Shatty has a thing for his X-Force & X-Factor teammate, and the feeling is mutual. And oh so hot.Responsibility (Cadre Alliance)- Shatterstar is a freedom fighter, opposing the rule of Mojo V of the Spineless Ones, in the far future of the Mojoverse.Motivation (Earth Culture)- Raised in an MTV-like action atmosphere, Shatterstar can hardly make sense of Earth and it's customs, but strives to improve.

-OH MY GOD YOU GUYS SHATTERSTAR IS SO FRICKIN' AWESOME AND NINETIES AAAAAAAARRRRGGHHHHH!!!! HE'S SO F-ING BAD-ASS HE'S GOT SWORDS ***WITH SWORDS ON THEM***!!!!! HE DUAL-WIELDS THOSE KILLER BLADES WHILE HACKING UP THE BAD GUYS LIKE A FREAKIN' PSYCHOPATH I LOVE IT!!! HE'S GOT BAD-ASS LONG HAIR AND PONYTAILS ALL OVER THE FRICKIN' PLACE!! HE'S A KILLER T.V. WARRIOR FROM THE FRICKIN' MOJOVERSE AND KILLED DOZENS OF GUYS ALL BY HIMSELF! I HAVE THIS COMIC WHERE HE TOTALLY TEAMS UP WITH WOLVERINE AND THEY BEAT THE HELL OUT OF SOME VID-KIDS!! THEN HE WENT AND FRICKIN' KILLED MASQUE, AND WHEN HE FOUGHT THE M.L.F., HE FREAKIN' CHOPPED OFF REAPER'S HAND!! AND THEN HE DID IT AGAIN! HE'S SO BAD-ASS I'M HAVING A FREAKING OVERDOSE YOU GUYYYYSSSS AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

-*ahem* Now that that's out of the way, some explanation. Shatterstar is from a future version of the Mojoverse (and possibly Longshot's son), rejecting his rulers (who forced him to fight in arena combat) and trying to join the current timeline's X-Men. He found X-Force instead, and generally became an icon of Rob Liefeld's, with hyper-90s double-swords (ie. two blades on one hilt, as if that makes any real sense), hastily-added Mutant Power (a near-uselessly tiring Generic Energy Blast), and a thing over his eye like all Liefeld characters have.

-He did the "Honorable Warrior" thing for a long time, and also the "I'm a alien who doesn't get Earth custom" thing, which made him a bit more entertaining once Liefeld left and Fabian Nicieza took full writing duties. Unfortunately, he got kind of silly as the book went on (where he got merged with some random mutant guy in a coma), and never made it out of the 90s with a featured book. Liefeld did a few more things with him, but nothing big (a Limited Series was all), and he's currently making out with Rictor in the pages of X-Factor. So he had a hot start (even got "the rub" from Wolverine by appearing in his book), but eventually petered out to nothing, where he exists as kind of a joke about the 1990s in comics. But still, DOUBLE-BLADED SWORDS ARRRRRGGHHHH!!!!!

-Shatterstar stats up as an effective, mildly super-strong Melee Fighter with cool swords. I with Devices rather than Equipment, because they're HIS swords, and are shown to be ultra-sharp and able to cut through nearly anything. Wiki says something about Teleportation powers in the swords, but I've never seen that in 40 issues of X-Force, so I'm gonna willfully ignore it- it was so brutally limited that there's almost no point to it anyways. His Mutant Power is an afterthought- a Blast so limited that he can barely utilize it (I've read a total of three apperances of the attack- his debut, a New Warriors cross-over, and once where he surprised Reaper & Wildside by blasting it out)- it's Distracting, Tiring AND requires metal or his swords to use.

-Otherwise, Shatterstar is very strong, very tough, and a hardcore fighter with tons of Combat-based Advantages to his name. He's pretty accurate (+11 to hit with Swords might seem a little low for a Melee Fighter type of guy, but he's got All-Out & Accurate Attack to make up for it), hard to hit (moreso in melee), and enough to challenge guys like Wolverine & Sabretooth for several rounds before they take him out (this happened twice- Wolvie handily defeated him both times).

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Jun 22, 2013 1:02 am, edited 4 times in total.

Complications:Prejudice (Mutant)Motivation (Save the Future)- Cable is obsessed with preventing his vile timeline from occurring. Motivation (Hope Summers)- Cable has been charged with the protection of young Hope, the first new Mutant born since M-Day.Motivation (The Closed Fist)- The polar opposite of Xavier's "Open Hand" approach, Cable believes in knocking down opposition and the path of violence, but has the same overall goals as Xavier.Reputation (Hard-Ass)- Cable's leadership of the New Mutants came into question many times, and many of the older X-Men have trouble trusting him.Relationship (Cyclops)- Cable's birth father is the leader of the X-Men, who is now younger than he is. There's a strange sense of comraderie and respect between the two of them, but they aren't really close as friends.Relationship (Cannonball)- Sam was like a son to Cable (who originally came to the past to awaken Sam as an External "High Lord"), and the two had an uncomfortable relationship. Sam wanted to make the old man proud, and Cable often sought to emotionally distance himself from the young man. Enemy (Apocalypse)- Cable was sent from his future, where his arch-nemesis was the dark overlord of all Earth. As a baby, he was infected with a Techno-Organic Virus by Apocalypse as well.Enemy (Stryfe)- A vulgar clone of Cable, Stryfe came to believe that he was the original, and was obsessed with killing both Nathan and his parents (and Jean Grey by proxy).Enemy (Tolliver)- Cable's son Tyler Dayspring eventually turned evil, becoming the crimeboss Tolliver, who challenged Cable and eventually turned into the villain "Genesis".Weakness (Magnetic & Electrical Attacks)- As a cyborg comprised of nearly 50% metal, Cable is highly vulnerable to attacks that do more damage to metal substances.Power Loss (Psionics)- Cable's psionic power moves with the winds- sometimes he's as powerful as Nate "X-Man" Grey, sometimes he has no power at all. It pretty much just depends.

-Cable was created by Rob Liefeld with instructions to make a new mentor character to the New Mutants, an "opposite of Xavier". Everyone liked the idea, and so Cable showed up- and he hit BIG. People forget in the modern age of poo-poohing the 90s, but this guy was EVERYWHERE. He was guest-starring in "Wolverine" and getting his own Limited Series within a couple years, in addition to taking over the New Mutants book with an array of Liefeld-created bad guys (the Mutant Liberation Front, with Stryfe as their boss) as his own personal enemies. Half a dozen old-school characters met up with him and were like "Oh damn! It's Cable! This guy's tough!" By the time Liefeld left Marvel, he'd created a monster.

-It was up to Fabian Nicieza and the other X-writers to flesh out the character. Using his bad-ass soldier boy characterization, they revealed the totality of his past, and linked him with the Summers clan (which at that point was only KIND OF hard to understand): He was Nathan Summers, a baby boy born to Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey when the latter was thought dead), and given a Techno-Organic Virus by Apocalypse when the writers got sick of heroes with kids (lame as it was, it's probably a good thing they wrote out the Spider-Baby because of crap like this). So Cyke sends his baby boy into the future, and the writers slowly forget about him, because he's back with the mainline X-Men book and there's stuff to do. And it turns out this future-baby was raised by Rachel Summers, the daughter of a future Cyclops & Jean Grey (*sigh*...) sent into our past, but then back to a different future where Apocalypse rules.

-So the baby is raised into a half-cybernetic guy, but a clone (*sigh*) made of him when they thought he was gonna die turns into Stryfe, who also hates Apocalypse as well as hating Cable. So as an adult, Nathan/Cable goes back into the past to fight Apocalypse and prevent his future de-blah-blah-blah, while also teaming up with the latest "External High Lord", who turns out to be Sam Guthrie. And thus his connection to the New Mutants.

-Over time, Cable came to be a bit nicer: He was never QUITE as kill-happy as his detractors or parodies would have you believe (Magog in "Kingdom Come" is basically Cable with a helmet- even the eye-scar is the same, as is the white hair), but he shifted into a "Father to his men" type of guy, and eventually developed his psionic powers as an X-Man during the era when MAJOR 90s backlash struck. His comebacks never really stuck, though- as he was a bit too over-done during his prime, and his power levels have jumped all over the place (from lifting Manhattan to struggling to pick up power tools). As of "Second Coming", he's dead after a heroic sacrifice, which is arguably for the best. I never HATED the character, but he was always one of my least-favourite X-Force members, even during his prime.

-Cable's an expensive guy, mainly thanks to all his stupid equipment. Giant flying Satellites, a massive arsenal of guns (some doing +10 damage!), tons of Skills, etc., add up to a really versatile Blaster who's pretty tough as well. He's PL 11 at Range, but not on Defense, as he's never really been a "Dodge"-happy kind of guy, relying on his pretty-high but not overly-strong Toughness. It's enough to about tie with Wolverine until the latter's Healing Factor kicks in and Cable starts feeling damage. Still, +11 Will and Last Stand make for a really hard guy to bring down and keep there with any type of attack. His actual Mutant Powers are at a REALLY low level, as it would take him years to become a "Psi-Mitar"-using guy. Later incarnations are so all over the place I couldn't possibly hope to stat them without actually having read those books (which I haven't)- you just kinda have to stick a random assortment to Telekinesis onto him sometimes. Also, note the ridiculous amount of Complications, even for an X-Character. The guy has PROBLEMS.

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:59 am, edited 4 times in total.

-Bedlam is... a guy. He debuted in the "Age of Apocalypse", and quickly got a "main continuity" version, a guy who could "disrupt systems", basically tech at first, then slowly moved up to disrupting biological systems and became a martial artist. Never read a comic featuring him, but I wanted all the "early era" X-Force guys built. He's apparently one of those guys casually murdered by the Church of Humanity via the crucifixion on the X-Mansion lawn (a similar fate befell Skin, who no longer had a purpose in the X-Books). Near as I can tell, these were his powers- the Nullify is RIDICULOUSLY expensive, but seems to be the full extent of his powers- a wide Burst that wipes out nearly all technology in range, that he can keep going at-will unless he's knocked unconscious. So he's a pricey bugger, but not overly effective to things that aren't technologically-based- he's just a PL 9 Affliction-based guy in that case.

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Aug 27, 2011 5:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Complications:Prejudice (Mutant)Responsibility (Camp Verde Tribe)- A proud Apache, James strives to live up to the example of his people, especially after they were murdered by Stryfe.Motivation (John Proudstar's Memory)- James worshipped his older brother John, the X-Men's short-lived Thunderbird, and this drives his entire life. He has still not entirely forgiven Charles Xavier for taking John away.Relationship (Hepzibah)- James has currently hooked up with the hot, fuzzy Space Skunk Hepzibah, formerly of the Starjammers.

-Warpath was my favourite member of X-Force. I always liked the "Team Strongman" types, and that in addition to his bad-ass name, look and wannabe hook-up with Siryn (my favourite X-Woman at the time) made him top dog in my opinion. He was a bit of a "Hot Blooded" Native stereotype, but hey, you can't win 'em all. That's why it was so weird for me to read his whole history. He started out with The Hellions, the New Mutants' rival squadron, as a vindictive kid obsessed with killing Professor Xavier for his role in Thunderbird's death. Wearing a copy of John Proudstar's costume, he had an un-powered Charles dead to rights, but realized that he couldn't go through with it. He still wasn't forgiving of Xavier, and they were never close after that, but he realized that it wasn't entirely the Prof's fault.

-He moved on as a recurring Hellions leader, but that group never got TOO much play in the New Mutants book. Eventually he joined Cable's X-Force at the tail end of the series, having his entire Reservation murdered (apparently by the Hellfire Club, as he'd just quit the Hellions a while earlier- just in time to avoid their massacre). Suddenly, the kid (who was merely a fairly well-built teenager) was now seven feet tall and wide as a frickin' truck under Rob Liefeld, and things only got WORSE later, as Tony Daniel drew him literally ten or eleven feet tall (enough to carry Siryn around and have her dwarfed by his ARM), really exaggerating his musculature and beefiness.

-This seguewayed to later X-Force after I stopped reading, when all of a sudden James was back to being just a well-built guy, and was now all speedy and could climb ultra-fast. Then Warren Ellis' bizarre run saw him LEARN HOW TO FLY, which makes NO SENSE given his power set up till that point, and later X-writer Ed Brubaker concurred, as when James exited a decade-long stint in Marvel Limbo (not Illyana's Limbo), he'd lost that power, but suddenly became a much lower-strength Scrapper type, using Vibranium Knives as weapons. He also hooked up with Hepzibah of the Starjammers, and started using his advanced senses and stuff more often. Once he joined X-Force, he could FLY AGAIN (*sigh*... so stupid...), and actually got a big push (he was the guy who offed Selene at the end of Blackest Nigh... I mean "Necrosha"), but left the team after "making his peace".

-James is a weird guy to build, because he's had a few incarnations, and some truly bizarre powers boosts. But nowadays, he's set-up as a Flying Brick who dual-wields Unbreakable (well, mostly) Bowie Knives, kind of mixing two different Archetypes together, in addition to enhanced Senses & Tracking abilities. So he's fairly Skilled, a good fighter (plenty of Advantages, including Accurate Attack, which is rare for Powerhouses), does a lot of damage, and can modify many of his caps. Truly, they've turned my old fave into a high-level bad-ass. He's one of the relatively small number of characters (compared to many others on this site) that I set up as a PL 11. He doesn't make his full caps in anything other than with his Bowie Knives, but he's still up there.

Complications:Prejudice (Mutant)Responsibility (Camp Verde Tribe)- A proud Apache, James strives to live up to the example of his people, especially after they were murdered by Stryfe.Motivation (John Proudstar's Memory)- James worshipped his older brother John, the X-Men's short-lived Thunderbird, and this drives his entire life. He has still not entirely forgiven Charles Xavier for taking John away.

-Here's Warpath as he appeared during the early days of X-Force, before the silly Flight power kicked in. He's basically a generic Powerhouse Build, packing Class 100-ish Super-Strength on top of some Speed, Impervious Toughness and a handful of Skills & Advantages, but he's generally much less than his later version. He's actually a bit STRONGER, though, as Warpath's strength feats went WAY down in his later years as a character, as they shifted his power set around. The days of slugging it out with The Juggernaut & Strong Guy are over, and he fights far differently.

Complications:Prejudice (Mutant)Rivalry (The New Mutants)Responsibility (Camp Verde Tribe)- A proud Apache, James strives to live up to the example of his people.Motivation (John Proudstar's Memory)- James worshipped his older brother John, the X-Men's short-lived Thunderbird, and this drives his entire life. He has still not entirely forgiven Charles Xavier for taking John away.

-James as Thunderbird II was a pretty good all-around PL 7 Melee Fighter guy, but his powers were quite vague. He KO'd Banshee easily with one shot, and Wolverine vouched for his hitting power, but he never really had any major strength feats to his name during his run. This is part of what makes James so weird- a Mini-Powerhouse build converts to a Class 80-ish super-heavyweight, which converts to a Flying Scrapper Weapon Guy.

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Jun 22, 2013 1:04 am, edited 7 times in total.

So thus starts my Hellions builds. The funny thing about them is they're my own personal example of "Doom Patrol Popularity". Which of course means "their vocal popularity far outstrips their actual popularity". This group of kids was introduced at the quarter-point of the New Mutants' title, and they were basically set up as a "Rival School" to the main group- many of their powers had direct counterparts (Wolfsbane-Catseye and Cannonball-Jetstream being the big ones), they followed the White Queen's EEEVIL Hellfire Club, and wanted to beat the hell out of the New Mutant kids.

But then some funny things happened. Despite only being in a smattering of books over the course of 100 issues (seriously, it's quite a lot smaller than you'd expect given the hype some people give the team), there was some really great characterization, some VERY unique powers, and a lot of fun in the rivalry. Starting out as basically Good (vs) Evil, things very quickly shifted to "Antagonistic Rivalry", with the teams engaging in races or little arguments while sharing time at a dance or a Hellfire Club gala or something. The Hellions even took the Mutants' side when Empath went WAY too far in the use of his powers.

You had Thunderbird II, living up to his brother's (short) legacy, leading the squad. Then there was Empath (supreme royal dick- Emotion Manipulator), Jetstream (dutiful generic guy- Flight), Roulette (snarky bad girl- Luck Discs), Tarot (actually nice girl- Summoning) and Catseye (cat in human's body- Werecat). Now, I normally hate the kind of extra hype that some characters get when it outstrips their actual use in-universe. I was really annoyed when I first saw "Record of Lodoss War" the anime when the Dark Elf chick who I'd read countless fan-pages & shrines of online turned out to be in the damn thing for a total of five minutes. I generally reject the "Mini-Fanbase for really minor characters" thing. But I loved this team. Their powers were either extremely original, or generic done in a cool, unique way (Jetstream could fly, but had to be a cyborg as he wasn't immune to his own Blast-Off; Catseye was an Animal Person, but actually literally more ANIMAL than person, and not angsting about it).

So it was kind of a pity that they trailed off at the end of the book's run. When Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza took over the book, they really didn't use the kids much, until they recruited Thunderbird as "Warpath" in X-Force. They were throwaway one-shot villains in a "New Warriors" issue, adding two new, AWFUL characters in Beef & Bevatron (I mean- REALLY). Then came that "Uncanny X-Men" relaunch with the new "Gold Strike Force". In their very first issue, we're subject to Trevor Fitzroy, a classically-overpowered lame 90s villain, who walks right into the Hellfire Club and EASILY kills off a bunch of the kids. What's worst is that the character who got the most play in the whole thing on the Hellions side was BEEF, who was only a few months old as a character at the time!

Then, in the next issue, he sucks dry the ENTIRE GROUP, wiping out one of the greatest cases of lost potential I've ever seen in comics. These kids had SO MUCH POTENTIAL within them, and it was spoiled in one fell swoop just because the various X-writers had no plans for them. I mean, I can't fault the writers for not wanting to use them so bad (Fabian Nicieza was great at doing stuff with characters who'd otherwise be lost, though), but to wipe out the whole team just like that? For shame. The only positive was that it gave Emma Frost her great characterization shift, going from mustache-twirlingly dark and evil to a sympathetic woman who lost the only things that mattered to her (a recurring theme with her, in both Genosha and the X-Massacre post-M-Day).

The lasting legacy of the Hellions is as such:Warpath- Still alive, as an X-Man & X-Force member, with plenty of new powers, but a general ignorance of his Hellions past (it's only mentioned once or twice in the X-Force run, and only during the "Younghunt", where the awful 90s villains The Upstarts gather to wipe out the New Mutants & Hellions' surviving members).Empath- His interesting powers & personality saved him as he popped up on occasion, but he was SO UNUSED during the entire 1990s that I'm surprised they didn't just include him amongst the dead. It wasn't until a few years back where he actually popped up again, as a villain.Firestar- She briefly joined the team during her own Limited Series (that went through major delays and almost never came out, so it's almost entirely forgotten), but didn't interact much with them aside from X-Men #200, where she's cajoled into engaging in Thunderbird's revenge mission.Magma- She switched to The Hellions when they & Empath became a bit nicer, and she grew close to him. Went into hardcore Marvel Limbo during the entire 1990s save for a handful of X-appearances, and is only now currently a recurring star of anything.Tarot- Got resurrected for a "New Hellions" team by King Bedlam, but died again when he got de-powered on M-Day.The "New" Hellions- Generation-X enemy Emplate and Bedlam's brother King Bedlam in X-Force both created one-shot groups of Hellions to oppose those teams, but the main "New" Hellions are Emma Frost's X-Students, led by Hellion himself. They were actually really good characters, which is why most of them got kept as post-M-Day mutants and merged into the "Young X-Men" group. The name only lasted a couple years.

The rest of the Hellions made a brief appearance during "Necrosha", but didn't really get up to too much, as the New Mutants mainly had to deal with Cypher & Warlock's return, though they did taunt Emma a bit.

The following builds will be of the whole team during both the New Mutants era (opposing the Mid-Run team of Mutants as PL 7 guys themselves- mostly), and then hypothetical "Adult" builds, if the kids had moved on and grown in power. Except for Beef & Bevatron, because they sucked.

Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Jun 22, 2013 1:05 am, edited 2 times in total.